Repairing Your Rear Window Defroster

It snowed last night. I mean it SNOWED. Your car is buried under seven inches of snow. You open the door, start the engine and turn on the rear window defroster. It takes a little while to clear the snow off your car and by that time the engine has warmed up enough to clear the windshield and started to clear the side windows. You look at the rear window and see that there are only a couple of clear strips and the rest of the window is still clouded over and impossible to see through.

Fixing small breaks in a defroster grid is fairly easy to do. You can go to NAPA, Auto Zone or any of the big auto parts store and get a rear window defroster repair kit. The alternative: climb in the back seat and scrape the rear window with your small window scraper. And that is not really a good idea.

Warning!

The defroster grid is silk-screened on, literally painted on to the glass. If you ever painted window trim you know it doesn't take much to scrape paint off glass. The defroster grid is easy to damage and the grids that are scratched will not work because continuity is broken. Any hard object such as furniture, boxes and toys can scratch the defroster grid. A simple credit card is enough to damage the grid. This can be prevented by not jamming stuff into your SUV or van and having it shift into the rear window. The only thing that should touch the window glass and defroster grid is a soft cloth and some glass cleaner. If you must scrub, do it gently and in the direction of the grid, not across it.

Replacing the rear window to repair a defroster gird is the last thing you want to do. A curved style of rear window on most cars can be several hundred dollars and for a SUV or mini-van, over $1000.00. Include installation and it's a lot more. Don't bother to submit the bill to your insurance company either; they'll just say, "Sorry, window glass is not covered."